gecko-dev/webtools/bugzilla

This is Bugzilla.  See <http://www.mozilla.org/bugs/>.


	==========
	DISCLAIMER
	==========

   This is not very well packaged code.  It's not packaged at all.  Don't
come here expecting something you plop in a directory, twiddle a few
things, and you're off and using it.  Work has to be done to get there.  
We'd like to get there, but it wasn't clear when that would be, and so we
decided to let people see it first.

	============
	INSTALLATION
	============

0. Introduction

   Installation of bugzilla is pretty straight forward, especially if your
machine already has MySQL and the MySQL-related perl packages installed.
If those aren't installed yet, then that's the first order of business.  The
other necessary ingredient is a web server set up to run cgi scripts.

1. Installing the Prerequisites

   The software packages necessary for the proper running of bugzilla are:

	1. MySQL database server and the mysql client
	2. Perl (5.004 or greater)
	3. DBI Perl module 
	4. Data::Dumper Perl module
	5. MySQL related Perl module collection
	6. TimeDate Perl module collection
	7. GD perl module (1.18 or greater)
	8. Chart::Base Perl module (0.99 or greater)
	9. The web server of your choice

   Bugzilla has quite a few prerequisites, but none of them are TCL.
Previous versions required TCL, but it no longer needed (or used).

1.1. Getting and setting up MySQL database

   Visit MySQL homepage at http://www.mysql.org and grab the latest stable
release of the server.  Both binaries and source are available and which you
get shouldn't matter.  Be aware that many of the binary versions of MySQL store
their data files in /var which on many installations (particularly common with
linux installations) is part of a smaller root partition.  If you decide to
build from sources you can easily set the dataDir as an option to configure.

  If you've installed from source or non-package (RPM, deb, etc.) binaries
you'll want to make sure to add mysqld to your init scripts so the server
daemon will come back up whenever your machine reboots.

1.2. Perl (5.004 or greater)

  Any machine that doesn't have perl on it is a sad machine indeed.  Perl
for *nix systems can be gotten in source form from http://www.perl.com.

  Perl is now a far cry from the the single compiler/interpreter binary it
once. It now includes a great many required modules and quite a few other
support files.  If you're not up to or not inclined to build perl from source,
you'll want to install it on your machine using some sort of packaging system
(be it RPM, deb, or what have you) to ensure a sane install.  In the subsequent
sections you'll be installing quite a few perl modules; this can be quite
ornery if your perl installation isn't up to snuff.

1.3. DBI Perl module

   The DBI module is a generic Perl module used by other database related
Perl modules.  For our purposes it's required by the MySQL-related
modules.  As long as your Perl installation was done correctly the DBI
module should be a breeze.  It's a mixed Perl/C module, but Perl's
MakeMaker system simplifies the C compilation greatly.

  Like almost all Perl modules DBI can be found on the Comprehensive Perl
Archive Network (CPAN) at http://www.cpan.org .  The CPAN servers have a
real tendency to bog down, so please use mirrors.  The current location at
the time of this writing (02/17/99) can be found in Appendix A.

  Quality, general Perl module installation instructions can be found on
the CPAN website, but basically you'll just need to:

	1. Untar the module tarball -- it should create its own directory
	2. Enter the following commands:
		perl Makefile.PL
		make
		make test
		make install

   If everything went ok that should be all it takes.  For the vast
majority of perl modules this is all that's required.

1.4 Data::Dumper Perl module

   The Data::Dumper module provides data structure persistence for Perl
(similar to Java's serialization).  It comes with later sub-releases of
Perl 5.004, but a re-installation just to be sure it's available won't
hurt anything.

   Data::Dumper is used by the MySQL related Perl modules.  It can be
found on CPAN (link in Appendix A) and can be installed by following the
same four step make sequence used for the DBI module.

1.5. MySQL related Perl module collection

   The Perl/MySQL interface requires a few mutually-dependent perl
modules.  These modules are grouped together into the the
Msql-Mysql-modules package.  This package can be found at CPAN (link in
Appendix A).  After the archive file has been downloaded it should be
untarred.

   The MySQL modules are all build using one make file which is generated
by running:

	make Makefile.PL

   The MakeMaker process will ask you a few questions about the desired
compilation target and your MySQL installation.  For many of the questions
the provided default will be adequate.

   When asked if your desired target is the MySQL or mSQL packages
selected the MySQL related ones.  Later you will be asked if you wish to
provide backwards compatibility with the older MySQL packages; you must
answer YES to this question.  The default will be no, and if you select it
things won't work later.

   A host of 'localhost' should be fine and a testing user of 'test'
should find itself with sufficient access to run tests on the 'test'
database which MySQL created upon installation.  If 'make test' and 'make
install' go through without errors you should be ready to go as far as
database connectivity is concerned.

1.6. TimeDate Perl module collection

   Many of the more common date/time/calendar related Perl modules have
been grouped into a bundle similar to the MySQL modules bundle. This
bundle is stored on the CPAN under the name TimeDate.  A (hopefully
current) link can be found in Appendix A.  The component module we're most
interested in is the Date::Format module, but installing all of them is
probably a good idea anyway.  The standard Perl module installation
instructions should work perfectly for this simple package.

1.7. GD Perl module (1.18 or greater)

   The GD library was written by Thomas Boutel a long while ago to
programatically generate images in C.  Since then it's become almost a
defacto standard for programatic image construction.  The Perl bindings to
it found in the GD library are used on a million web pages to generate
graphs on the fly.  That's what bugzilla will be using it for so you'd
better install it if you want any of the graphing to work.
  Actually bugzilla uses the Graph module which relies on GD itself, but
isn't that always the way with OOP.  At any rate, you can find the GD
library on CPAN (link in Appendix A) and it installs beautifully in the
usual fashion.

1.8. Chart::Base Perl module (0.99 or greater)

   The Chart module provides bugzilla with on-the-fly charting abilities.
It can be installed in the usual fashion after it has been fetched from
CPAN where it is found as the Chart-x.x... tarball in a directory to be
listed in Appendix A.

1.9. HTTP server

   You have a freedom of choice here - Apache, Netscape or any other server on
UNIX would do. The only thing - to make configuration easier you'd better run
HTTP daemon on the same machine that you run MySQL server on.  (Theoretically,
it's possible to always use MySQL in a remote manner, but we don't know of
anyone who has done that with Bugzilla yet.)

   You'll want to make sure that your web server will run any file with the
.cgi extension as a cgi and not just display it.  If you're using apache that
means uncommenting the following line in the srm.conf file:

	AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

   With apache you'll also want to make sure that within the access.conf
file the line:

	Options ExecCGI

is in the stanza that covers the directories you intend to put the
bugzilla .html and .cgi files into.

2. Installing the Bugzilla Files

   You should untar the bugzilla files into a directory that you're
willing to make writable by the default web server user (probably
'nobody').  You may decide to put the files off of the main web space for
your web server or perhaps off of /usr/local with a symbolic link in the
web space that points to the bugzilla directory.  At any rate, just dump
all the files in the same place (optionally omitting the CVS directory if
it accidentally got tarred up with the rest of bugzilla) and make sure
you can get at the files in that directory through your web server.

   Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that
directory writable by your webserver's user (which may require just
making it world writable).  Inside this main bugzilla directory issue the
following commands:

	touch comments
	touch nomail
	touch mail
	
   Make sure the commands, nomail, and mail files are writable by the
webserver too.

   Lastly, you'll need to set up a symbolic link from /usr/bonsaitools/bin
to the correct location of your perl executable (probably /usr/bin/perl).  Or,
you'll have to hack all the .cgi files to change where they look for perl.

3. Setting Up the MySQL database

   After you've gotten all the software installed and working you're ready
to start preparing the database for its life as a the back end to a high
quality bug tracker.

    First, you'll want to fix MySQL permissions.  Bugzilla always logs in as
user "bugs", with no password.  That needs to work.  MySQL permissions are a
deep, nasty complicated thing.  I've just turned them off.  If you want to do
that, too, then the magic is to do run "mysql mysql", and feed it commands like
this (replace all instances of HOSTNAME with the name of the machine mysql is
running on):

	DELETE * FROM host;
	DELETE * FROM user;
	INSERT INTO host VALUES ('localhost','%','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y');
	INSERT INTO host VALUES (HOSTNAME,'%','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y');
	INSERT INTO user VALUES ('localhost','root','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y');
	INSERT INTO user VALUES (HOSTNAME,'','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y');
	INSERT INTO user VALUES (HOSTNAME,'root','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y');
	INSERT INTO user VALUES ('localhost','','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y');

This run of "mysql mysql" may need some extra parameters to deal with whatever
database permissions were set up previously.  In particular, you might have to say "mysql -uroot mysql", and give it an appropriate password.

For much more information about MySQL permissions, see the MySQL documentation.

   Next we'll create the bugs database in MySQL.  This is done using the
'mysql' command line client.  This client allows one to funnel SQL
statements into the MySQL server directly.  It's usage summary is
available by running:

	mysql --help

from the command line.

   Once you've begun mysql you'll see a 'mysql>' prompt.  At the prompt you
should enter:

	create database bugs;
	quit  



   To create the tables necessary for bug tracking and to minimally
populate the bug tracking system you'll need to run the eight shell
scripts found in your bugzilla directory that begin with 'make'.  These
scripts load data into the database by piping input into the mysql
command.


   When calling the eight scripts order doesn't matter, but this one is
fine:

	./makeactivitytable.sh
	./makebugtable.sh
	./makecctable.sh
	./makecomponenttable.sh
	./makelogincookiestable.sh
	./makeproducttable.sh
	./makeprofilestable.sh
	./makeversiontable.sh

   After running those you've got a nearly empty copy of the mozilla bug
tracking setup.

4. Tweaking the Bugzilla->MySQL Connection Data

   If you have played with MySQL permissions, rather than just opening it
wide open as described above, then you may need to tweak the Bugzilla 
code to connect appropriately.

   In order for bugzilla to be able to connect to the MySQL database
you'll have to tell bugzilla where the database server is, what database
you're connecting to, and whom to connect as.  Simply open up the
global.pl file in the bugzilla directory and find the line that begins
like:

	$::db = Mysql->Connect("

   That line does the actual database connection.  The Connect method
takes four parameters which are (with appropriate values):

	1. server's host: just use "localhost"
	2. database name: "bugs" if you're following these directions
	3. MySQL username: whatever you created for your webserver user
		probably "nobody"
	4. Password for the MySQL account in item 3.

Just fill in those values and close up global.pl

5. Setting the Maintainer Information

    Before the last file level configuration can be done you'll have to create
a data/params file.  This file is created when the first bugzilla page is
accessed that needs it.  The easiest way is to go visit the "query.cgi"
bugzilla page.  After that, the data subdirectory should have been created, and
the data/params file should have appeared.

    Within that directory you'll find a file called 'params'.  params contains
all sorts of juicy things that you'll be tempted to change, but don't bother --
there's a nice web form to change all except the maintainer's email address.
Find the line that begins with "$::param{'maintainer'}" and set the
maintainer's email address to your own.

    Now, you can create your own bugzilla account.  To do so, just try to "add
a bug" from the main bugzilla menu (now available from your system through your
web browser!).  You'll be prompted for logon info, and you should enter your
email address and then select 'mail me my password'.  When you get the password
mail, log in with it.  Don't finish entering that new bug; instead, go to the
query page (off of the bugzilla main menu) where you'll now find a 'edit
parameters' option which is filled with editable treats.

6. Setting Up the Whining Cron Job (Optional)

   By now you've got a fully functional bugzilla, but what good are bugs
if they're not annoying?  To help make those bugs more annoying you can
set up bugzilla's automatic whining system.  This can be done by adding
the following command as a daily crontab entry (for help on that see that
crontab man page):

	cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./whineatnews.pl

7. Bug Graphs (Optional)

   As long as you installed the GD and Graph::Base Perl modules you might
as well turn on the nifty bugzilla bug reporting graphs.  Just add the
command:
	
	cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./collectstats.pl

as a nightly entry to your crontab and after two days have passed you'll
be able to view bug graphs from the Bug Reports page.

---------[ Appendices ]-----------------------

Appendix A. Required Software Download Links

   All of these sites are current as of February 17, 1999.  Hopefully
they'll stay current for a while.

MySQL: http://www.mysql.org

Perl: http://www.perl.org

CPAN: http://www.cpan.org

DBI Perl module: ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/DBI/

Data::Dumper module:
	ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Data/

MySQL related Perl modules:
	ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Mysql/

TimeDate Perl module collection:
	ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Date/


GD Perl module: ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/GD/

Chart::Base module:
	ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Chart/


Appendix B. Modifying Your Running System

   Bugzilla optimizes database lookups by storing all relatively static
information in the versioncache file, located in the data/ subdirectory
under your installation directory (we said before it needs to be writable,
right?!)

   If you make a change to the structural data in your database (the
versions table for example), or to the "constants" encoded in
defparams.pl, you will need to remove the cached content from the data
directory (by doing a "rm data/versioncache"), or your changes won't show
up!

   That file gets automatically regenerated whenever it's more than an
hour old, so Bugzilla will eventually notice your changes by itself, but
generally you want it to notice right away, so that you can test things.


Appendix C. History

   This document was originally adapted from the Bonsai installation
instructions by Terry Weissman <terry@mozilla.org>.

   The February 25, 1999 re-write was done by Ry4an Brase
<ry4an@ry4an.org>, with some edits by Terry Weissman.